Cotton has this lightness, this quality of being drawn into fine threads, that is like its magic. Yet it was once picked by slaves. It started the Industrial Revolution. It employed vast numbers of young children. The way most of it is made today spews huge quantities of chemicals into the earth and into the water table. I bounce the cotton on my palm and see that it’s not even formed. It’s difficult to think that in the history of this cloudy, soft, light material there can have been so much suffering.
